Sun liked my work on getting KDE compiling with Solaris, so at the end of January of this year I was invited by them to join the OpenSolaris Pilot program. This then became the main site for OpenSolaris, the Free Software version of Solaris.

As a member of the OpenSolaris Pilot, I have been building KDE for
both SPARC and Intel/AMD. KDE is enormously popular amongst Solaris
users, so there have been a lot of expectations (as well as pressure and nervousness on my part) for the KDE Solaris (SunStudio compiler/native) ports,
from both inside and outside Sun.

This has the potential of becoming something very big for KDE.
There is an established expectation at OpenSolaris that i will provide
the KDE Solaris builds for both Sparc and Intel, with Sun Studio.
Sun gave me free licenses for SunStudio specifically to build and
maintain KDE, and serveral engineers at Sun from the kernel and
compiler teams have helped me a lot with my Solaris ports. So it is
truly a joint effort at this point, and Sun deserves a lot of credit
for how open and helpful they have been.

I do all this in my free time, because my real day job doesn't involve open source or KDE at all. I live and work in New York City where I
write software for trading and valuing. So, given the rather dry and stressful nature of my daily endeavours,
I need some creative counterbalance to all this. This is where KDE
comes into play. It's fun to work on, and it runs on Solaris, which
is my favorite UNIX. It's also quite difficult to port, because KDE
is not originally written for the Sun's compilers.

Why do I like Solaris? First and foremost it's
the best UNIX out there. Says me. Second, I've been writing
code on Solaris for about 10 years now, and before that SunOS. So part
of it is habit and part of it is really rather biased: when
you get used to working in a certain environment for 10+ years, every
day... and this feels like the best possible fit ... how
easy would it be to let go of it? There's a link in Solaris to a not
so distant past when software, hardware and everything around them
were different. I was a small part of those times. And part of it
is because i like Sun as a company. They easily get a bad reputation, and
people tend to forget how much they have done for computing
and software engineering, and still do.

Why I like KDE? Because it looks beautiful, it's easy to use and because it's written in C++. Plus I have fun hacking on it.

There's something really interesting happening at OpenSolaris and KDE is part of it. So, i want to invite you to our discussion list, drop by and say hi and maybe sign up and join. We want to build the coolest desktop for OpenSolaris.

eh eh. realtime preemt IS important, but Con is also writing a CPU scheduler that is, in design, better than mainline. it hasn't been included in mainline, at first because it didn't get enough testing, now mostly because 'there already is a scheduler', altough that scheduler has far more code and complexity for the same thing (con's scheduler, staircase, tries to be interactive by design, not by 'hack-on'). maybe, when this measure tool is completed, mainline and Con can both tune their schedulers, and we'll see who is best...

for an interactive feel, many parts of the kernel are important. short codepaths are important, and pre-emption makes this possible. but if the wrong process then gets cpu, or it is wasted by kswapd - it won't feel very responsive... so we need at the very least a good CPU scheduler (current one is nice, but it can be improved), further work on CFQ (IO scheduler) and a better swap subsystem, as linux slows down to a crawl if you use more than 100% cpu (windoze handles this absolutely a lot better).

What I really like there in Opensolaris principles, This is what I consider true free software and free software developers and users.:

We will be inclusive.
---------------------
Proposals will be evaluated based on technical merit and consistency with overarching design goals, constraints, and requirements.

We will be respectful and honest.
---------------------------------
Developers and users have the right to be treated with respect. We do not make ad hominem attacks, and we encourage constructive criticism. Our commitment to civil discourse allows new users and contributors with contrarian ideas an opportunity to be heard without intimidation.

why discuss this here in this story instead of on bugs.kde.org or even panel-devel@kde.org where it's on topic? ;)

as allan noted, it wasn't very popular and was a fairly nasty set of hacks. perhaps because it screwed with other people's key bindings. this isn't ms windows, after all. you can get this behaviour back, though, by unmapping the win key as a modifier in your X config and binding it to open the menu.

We people aren't usability experts or hackers like you people. We just want things to work.

WTF cares what hacks go into it? When I press the menu button I want the menu. Pretty damn simple.

Unfortunately KDE will never understand this desire of normal people for things to just work, or our hatred and frustration when often used features suddenly disappear without a trace, since it is made up of usability "experts" and hackers with a different world view from ours.

a) "System" which is like Windows' "My Computer".
b) "Konqueror" which is like Internet Explorer+Windows Explorer,
c) "kolourpaint" like mspaint.
d) "KOffice" which is like MS Office
e) "Find files/folders" which is like Find of windows 95.

While I agree with you that it should be possible to have the Win key as a single key and as a modifier (when Windows can do it, why shouldn't we be able to), you don't help your point by attacking people personally.

that's not at all what i meant. so let me be a bit clearer for you: because KDE is not ms windows, we aren't beholden to follow it's every step. we can have things that may resemble windows for various reasons (ease of migration, they are good ideas, etc) but we don't have to copy everything (esp the bad ideas).

Now now. If you know a sane way to re-implement your favored Win key behavior feel free to attache a patch here. The previous implementation was removed exactly because it was a very ugly hack and incompatible not only with KDE but also with the X Window System, nothing else.

As others have said, it is a common confusion that KDE aims to please the user. KDE is here to tickle developers, not users. Without developers KDE is nothing, but without users KDE goes on its merry way. Windows on the other hand purely exists to make as much money as possible, and this is not possible without loads of users. Windows cares much more about users than it does developers.

So if the decision is between making users happy or developers happy, Windows chooses users and KDE chooses developers. Hands down. The focus is simply different in the Unix world - it's optimized for programmers.

Nice flamebait you set up there, but how does that fit with all the feature requests by users KDE developers implement all the time?! Most KDE developers aim to please users if it can be done while keeping the code standards high. Ugly hacks which drop the code standard get removed after some time, and that's what just happened here.

This kind of post is hilarious. I mean, I use it. It fits me. Is it that because every once in a while I write code I am not a user?

I install Linux for dozens or hundreds of people a month. They use it. Many (most) like it. Are they not users because they use it at work?

Sure, I think I know what you mean (I also think it's mosty crap, but what the hell). I suppose "Unix is not adequate for this specific kind of user I have in mind" is not so satisfying to your inner troll.

wrong. KDE is here to make development of it appealing to developers. the interface is here to server *users*, however. while there will be some users who don't feel well served (one shoe does not fit all feet), we do aim for the broadest user applicability possible.

so while we do keep in mind that we mustn't chase off developers (but, for instance, requiring them to be slaves to every idiot on bugs.kde.org or else have their svn account revoked as if it were a corporate job), we do write our software for users.

please. ESR is irrelevant to the desktop and hardly relevant to linux or any other open source operating system in general. i disagreed with many of the points in his book and found it laughably out of date as far as his perspective on software development goes.

ESR does not represent me when it comes to devel, and i doubt he represents many (if any!) of the KDE devels in this manner either.

> We people aren't usability experts or hackers like you people. We just want things to work.

> WTF cares what hacks go into it? When I press the menu button I want the menu. Pretty damn simple.

> Unfortunately KDE will never understand this desire of normal people for things to just work, or our hatred and frustration when often used features suddenly disappear without a trace, since it is made up of usability "experts" and hackers with a different world view from ours.

This is why you don't get it. It was a hacked up feature, that wasn't even popular. The thing is, KDE will survive without users, but it _cannot_ survive w/o developers. So, if an underused feature reaks of bad design and problematic implementation, the only logical step is to remove it. If KDE devels tried to hack up every feature into it that everybody wants, no matter how troublesome or useful it is, without thiking of the big picture, design, and overall quality of the architecture; KDE would not be nearly as appealing to work with, and there wouln't be as many people contributing to it. In the end the user would lose.

the users for whom it crippled KDE's key bindings, that's who. we happen to have more users than just you. given that you feel very strongly about supporting users, i hope you can understand why trying to support them is important to us.

> Unfortunately KDE will never understand this desire of normal people for
> things to just work

not only is this wrong, but it's completely meaningless. there is no monolithic "KDE", there is a large community of developers of which i am but one. and many of us DO understand the desire for things to "just work". that hackneyed phrase, however, has NOTHING to do with the "win" key popping up an app menu.

> our hatred and frustration when often used features suddenly disappear

i understand that very well. i've kept many features in kicker that are a paint in the rear to maintain and which i personally don't even like because of this. when something gets removed, there is a very good reason behind it.

To clarify, Windows is not a standard that must be followed, it's merely another desktop. The Win key is not the "menu" key, it's only applicable to Windows. The only reason you have it on your keyboard is because Microsoft is a monopoly.

The only reason it seemes intuitive to you is because you've been trained on Windows. If you had been trained on Mac OSX or Solaris CDE (to keep on topic) then the behavior of the Win key would seem very odd. Do not confuse familiarity with usability.

If you want a clone of the Windows desktop, KDE is not it, so try elsewhere. But don't try GNOME either because it isn't a clone of Windows either.

I can't believe you jerks. If you're not going to write a patch and help this guy out then shut up. This is a GREAT feature, two years later, people still can't use a modifier as a shortcut. This thread should be 1 post, the original poster asking for the feature.. and then maybe me 2 years later, a post going "huh, still not done, I really want this". Instead, every other person in this thread is an IDIOT. You kids probably tell your friends that the above "work" makes you KDE contributors. Who cares HOW he asks for the feature, if you can read you can pull out the important information and ignore the rest and just be helpfull.

I've got here a Cherry keyboard and infact the Windows key was replaced with a Linux key out of the box! :) But what makes me suspicious is that on the back of the keyboard is an inscription that says "The Windows logo is a registered trademark of Microsoft corporation". Maybe Cherry forgot to rework the back of their keyboard when the redesigned it for Linux... :)